The struggles of HealthCare.gov have clearly been problematic for the Affordable Care Act, but it’s not clear what they will ultimately mean for the law.

This week’s Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, which was in the field during last week’s media coverage of the website’s problems, revealed little change in what people think about the health law – 37% said it is a “good idea” while 47% said it is a “bad idea.” In the September poll, 31% said it was a “good idea,” while 44% said it was a “bad idea.”

Traffic numbers for HealthCare.gov compiled by the web analytics firm comScore show visits climbed last week after dropping from the first week’s 5.3 million unique visitors. Visitors dropped to 2.4 million in the second week, and 1.6 million in the third before rising to 2.3 million last week. Those numbers are not a good start, but they may indicate something other than a catastrophe.

To be clear the comScore data, estimates based off of actual web traffic numbers, do not show a high level of buy-in for the ACA. Of all the visitors to the site, only about 180,000 compared plans and completed an application, according to their figures.

A comparison of key state numbers indicates a lot of window-shopping. The states in the chart below are the top five for the number of uninsured people under 65-years-old that are using the federal government and HealthCare.gov for their health insurance exchange. In all, 36 states are using HealthCare.gov while 14 have set up their own exchanges.

There’s a lot of variance in the numbers above and it makes it difficult to read their meaning for the future of HealthCare.gov and the law. The numbers don’t break down applications for private insurance compared with those for Medicaid, the state-federal health program for the poor which 26 states have expanded under the ACA.

Texas, which has almost 6 million uninsured, has roughly the same number of visits as Florida, which only has about 4 million uninsured. And Georgia, which only has about 2 million uninsured, has had more people start an application than Texas. What do those numbers suggest?

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Politics, or the political lean of the state, doesn’t necessarily seem to be a big factor in how many HealthCare.gov visits each is generating or in how many people are creating applications. Yes, Texas, with a Republican governor and a solid Republican voting pattern, seems to be on the low side for site visits and application initiations. But Georgia, which also has a Republican governor and voting record, is not.

President Barack Obama lost Georgia in 2012 by 8 percentage points and it has far more visits and application creations than Illinois, which has a similar number of uninsured and is also Mr. Obama’s home state.

Race may be playing a factor here. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows African-Americans still overwhelmingly approve of the ACA – 66% of them say it is a “good idea.” And Georgia is the one state in the country with a more than a million uninsured that also has a population that is more than 30% African American.

Ethnicity and language are likely factors in the site visits as well in places like Florida and Texas. There is, as yet, no Spanish-language version of HealthCare.gov. That could be a big problem in Texas where nearly 10% of the population is Hispanic and Florida where more than 4% is Hispanic.

The Obama administration has been quick to point out that the ACA is still just getting under way. HealthCare.gov and the exchanges are still only a month old and people have until March to sign up with a new insurance plan.

They’re right of course. And, as many have already noted, Massachusetts, which has the health-care law that served as a rough model for the ACA, received an extremely low number of enrollments when it first began accepting applications. Only 123 people signed up for coverage in that law’s first month, and that was, of course, without all the problems HealthCare.gov has had.

This week, the Department of Health and Human Services promised the problems with the website will be fixed by Nov. 30.

But beyond the fixes, the takeaway from these numbers may be this: If the ACA ultimately depends on getting the uninsured covered – and getting them to pay into the system – the future of the program is not just about fixing the website, it is about whether states like Texas and Florida look more like Georgia once the site is fixed.

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Washington Wire is one of the oldest standing features in American journalism. Since the Wire launched on Sept. 20, 1940, the Journal has offered readers an informal look at the capital. Now online, the Wire provides a succession of glimpses at what’s happening behind hot stories and warnings of what to watch for in the days ahead. The Wire is led by Reid J. Epstein, with contributions from the rest of the bureau. Washington Wire now also includes Think Tank, our home for outside analysis from policy and political thinkers.